Dean was having a hard time converting his online following. He noticed that his audience loved the idea of his product, but were hesitating to pay the premium price tag associated with his luxury dog coats.

This is a common problem. When a new product launches, especially in a higher price bracket, there’s often market hesitation.

One tempting approach would be to lower your prices in order to gain a little momentum. Bad move! Your audience will expect less, think they’ve got less, share less, associate your brand with less, and complain more when you hike your prices.

Dean realised that purchase hesitation isn’t ever because of price. It’s because his audience lacked trust.

Owen & Edwin was an unknown brand, so it’s audience didn’t trust that they would be getting what they paid for. So, they introduced a new product: Dog Biscuits.

The biscuits, sold at cost, introduced the audience to a purchase with much less risk involved . From dog treats, the customer might choose to purchase a dog collar or other accessory. Finally, the customer knows and trusts the brand, and they are ready to buy their pooch a luxury coat.

It’s unreasonable to expect our audience to trust us from the very start. What can we do to slowly introduce our products to our customers, and earn their trust along the way?

Sometimes, dishonesty disguises itself as innovation. For example, Google is dishonest about the user data it collects. This crafty monetisation strategy is easy to justify: Free Search, Better AI, etc. But it’s still dishonest, and it leaves a bad taste.

Facebook is another example of deceptive innovation, trading your privacy for profit. They’ve built an amazing product, but at what cost?

Apple understands this principle. Since they don’t compete in the big-data arena, they can uniquely offer their products as more private. They advertise this, knowing that privacy influences buying decisions.

User awareness of these ethically-grey practices is growing. As a result, there now exists a “Free-Pause” – a hesitation while our audience asks what’s in it for you?

There’s no need to throw away big-data innovations, but we must commit to being more transparent with our customers about how we make money.